The Gift I Didn’t Want to Receive
Welcome people! This is my first official blog post and it’s my birthday. There I said it…IT’S MY BIRTHDAY. I’m not shy about it, honestly I’m not super shy about much. Birthdays are usually my favorite, they were always really special growing up. With all the warm and fuzziness from growing up, I try hard to make sure my kids birthdays are really special. If I can’t get it right everyday of the year, at least I can attempt to get it right on the one day that really means something.
Every year as an adult, I attempt to look back on the past year. Sometimes I start a project or journey that I have been thinking about, regardless of what I do (or don’t do)…I try to look for growth. So this year, I’m going to start a blog. A blog about my life that incorporates my sense of humor and the way I look at life, about my journey as a woman, mom, wife and what I think about & encounter on a daily basis. God help us all and god help me, my thoughts on the internet…this could get bad. Right now it doesn’t look like much, but I’m just starting out and I gotta start somewhere.
Basically I was unprepared for my 36th year of life, but let me explain…
Have you ever received a gift that you didn’t want? Not just a gift that you didn’t like because it was the wrong size, color or just wasn’t you. A gift that meant something was coming that you weren’t prepared for…a gift that was a great sentiment, but at the complete wrong time.
Last year, my wonderful husband gave me this as a present on my birthday. I opened it up and couldn’t even read it, I placed it back in the box and closed the lid with tears in my eyes. You see the necklace said “no longer by my side but forever in my heart” (with paw prints), but my dog was sitting at my feet COMPLETELY ALIVE…for now.
It was 10 days previous to this that we had taken Cliff to the vet and they told us that he had a mass in his bladder. A mass that nothing could be done about, they told us to just keep him comfortable and we’d know when it was time. This news was still fresh and it hurt. Cliff was my first baby, he was my baby before I had real human babies.
I always attempt to start a new birth year with a fresh start. I was in need of a new start. The past year was spent praying, wishing and hoping for another addition to our family and I had ended up with a prolonged miscarriage. A loss and experience that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, a life changing event. Just 10 days prior to my ‘fresh start’, I knew that sometime in my next year I would be experiencing another loss. And my thoughtful husband decided to engrave my pending loss in a pendant for me to wear around my neck, and give it to me for my birthday. I didn’t want this gift. I didn’t want to think about this and I certainly didn’t want to wear it. So I hid it in a box in a drawer. At this point in my life, if I could of gotten in the box and hid in the drawer…I would of done the same.
Fast forward a year later…
Today, on my 37th birthday, I have that same necklace…the gift that I didn’t want to receive last year…around my neck. Yes I ended up losing Cliff, and yes it hurt a lot and yes I still miss him. But today, I am wearing it proudly, because it turns out that it was actually a gift that I treasure. The whole story makes me laugh now, and the fact that I get to keep it in my back pocket and throw it at my husband when I need to prove a point…makes me smile. It was definitely the right present given to me at the wrong time, but regardless he knew what I needed…but shhh don’t tell him that.
Today as I’m wearing the gift I never wanted to receive around my neck, I received another necklace from my little family. A necklace that has 2 pendants on it with the names of my 2 kids on it, the exact gift that I spent 2 years praying for. Life is full of irony.
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